EDITORIAL 291 



cling almost exclusively to the memory subjects and the elements 

 of mathematics, and college students are apt to adhere in college 

 to the mental habits they acquired at school." 



' The changes which ought to be made immediately in the pro- 

 grammes of American secondary schools, in order to correct the 

 glaring deficiencies of the present programmes, are chiefly: the 

 introduction of more hand, ear, and eye work — such as drawing, 

 carpentry, turning, music, sewing, and cooking, and the giving of 

 much more time to the sciences of observation — chemistry, phys- 

 ics, biology, and geography — not political, but geological and eth- 

 nographical geography." 



"It is not the secondary school alone which needs to be reformed 

 — the elementary school needs to set a different standard of attain- 

 ment, not lower or easier, but rather higher and harder — a stand- 

 ard in which the training of the senses shall be an important ele- 

 ment." 



"The devotees of natural and physical science during the last 

 hundred and fifty years have not shown themselves inferior to any 

 other class of men in their power to reason and to will, and have 

 shown themselves superior to any other class of men in respect to 

 the value or worth to society of the product of those powers. The 

 men who, since the nineteenth century began, have done most for 

 the human race through the right use of their reasons, imagina- 

 tions, and wills are the men of science, the artists, and the skilled 

 craftsmen, not the metaphysicians, the orators, the historians, or 

 the rulers." 



Mr. Flexner, in describing his modern school curriculum, says: 



' The work in science would be the central and dominating fea- 

 ture of the school — a departure that is sound from the standpoint 

 of psychology and necessary from the standpoint of our main pur- 

 pose. Children would begin by getting acquainted with objects 

 — animate and inanimate; they would learn to know trees, plants, 

 animals, hills, streams, rocks, and to care for animals and plants. 

 At the next stage, they would follow the life cycles of plants and 

 animals and study the processes to be observed in inanimate things. 

 They would also begin experimentation — physical, chemical, and 

 biological. In the upper grades, science would gradually assume 

 more systematic form. On the basis of abundant sense-acquired 

 knowledge and with senses sharpened by constant use, children 

 would be interested in problems and in the theoretic basis on which 



